"There's always a lot of talk about international migration — as well there should be. The flow of people from other countries into rural America is changing thousands of communities. But communities are also affected by migration within this country."

"I live on the banks of Looney Creek in Benham, deep in the hills of Harlan County. I'm proud to say I'm a former Marine; I spent my 19th birthday in Vietnam. I came home from the war and went into the coal mines, and shortly after was crushed in a rock fall."

"Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Kenneth Stone did one of the first studies on the economic effects of Wal-Mart on rural towns. He has revisited that study and again found that the coming of a Wal-Mart increases a town's overall retail sales."

"Is reading fiction a waste of time? I’ve found that most people who tell me that fiction is a waste of time are folks who seem to hold to a kind of sola cerebra vision of the Christian life that just doesn’t square with the Bible. The Bible doesn’t simply address man as a cognitive process but as a complex image-bearer who recognizes truth not only through categorizing syllogisms but through imagination, beauty, wonder, awe."